


To Robin With Love

by TheEleventhDog



Category: DCU
Genre: Chocolate, Multi, Relationship Issues, Secret Identity, Secret Relationship, Valentine's Day
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-02-14
Updated: 2020-02-14
Packaged: 2021-02-27 23:35:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,490
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22654090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheEleventhDog/pseuds/TheEleventhDog
Summary: Gotham's not the best place for romance, that doesn't stop anyone from trying.
Relationships: Bart Allen & Tim Drake & Kon-El | Conner Kent & Cassie Sandsmark, Bart Allen/Tim Drake/Kon-El | Conner Kent/Cassie Sandsmark
Comments: 4
Kudos: 87





	To Robin With Love

**Author's Note:**

> The original idea for this fic was a lot sweeter than this turned out to be. I don't know what happened. I accidently gave Tim relationship problems instead of writing fluff. Enjoy.
> 
> Happy Valentine's Day!

Winter in Gotham is special. Not special in a good way, more of a ‘how does it manage to make the cold feel dirty.’ Usually, the cold is something Tim would associate with cleanliness, things like polished tile floors, pure white snow, empty rooms without furniture or a speck of dust. But being out in Gotham makes it feel dirty.

Not even three feet of snow could ever cover what Gotham is. It doesn’t even try. The snow in the streets is brown and layered by ice in a way that cuts at your fingertips. Tim’s already had to dig five people out of it, he has his gauntlets on, but you can tell things like that. Sometimes he has nightmares about being trapped under it. Four of those people were dead.

And it’s a Friday. Meaning normally, he’d already be heading out to be with Young Justice for the weekend. But Bruce suspected that there’d be an increase in murders and robberies because Gotham is nothing if not romantic, so he stuck around. Batman and Gotham come first.

He should have known that wouldn’t stand. So far, Tim has spotted them twelve times out of the corner of his eye. He’s a fool for hoping Bruce hasn’t noticed but he hasn’t said anything so it might be okay. They aren’t hurting anyone.

Or so he thought.

Something clinks against the lens over his left eye and falls at his feet. Tim picks it out of the snow and examines it. It’s a small, metallic red, and heart-shaped, when he peels back a corner of the wrapper it’s clearly chocolate. Bruce starts to turn around, so Tim quickly takes off the wrapper, shoves it into his mouth, and hides the wrapper behind his back.

The look Bruce gives him is long, and maybe he wasn’t quick enough with hiding the chocolate. Maybe Bruce will ask him a question and he won’t be able to answer. Tim isn’t ready to explain this nor does he want to. Hell, Bruce will probably give him a lecture for eating strange chocolates off the roof, who knows what he’ll do if he finds out about the other thing.

Tim gives Bruce what he hopes is a casual and trustworthy nod. Bruce looks at him for a few moments longer before nodding back and grappling to the next building. The chocolate has melted in his mouth, and that was close. Too close. Tim glances in the direction the chocolate came from, then follows after Bruce.

Before he can shoot his grapple across, another heart-shaped projectile hits the back of his head. He catches it before it reaches the ground and throws it back the way it came with a glare. Tim didn’t spend two months carefully hiding this from Bruce and Dick to have things ruined by a piece of chocolate.

Landing on the next building, Tim shrugs at Bruce’s questioning look. They make it a few more buildings, and Tim sees it coming, a head poking up from behind a roof, and only seconds later a small dot is flying towards him. Except not. It misses Tim by a millimeter, he rushes to catch it before it hits Bruce’s back. He drops the chocolate into the snow and covers it with his foot. Bruce is looking at him again. Tim stares back.

“Robin.” He’s using the Batman voice and Tim has done nothing to deserve this. It’s not his fault he’s being sniped with chocolates. Well, maybe about twenty-five percent his fault, but that makes it seventy-five percent not his fault, so yeah, Tim doesn’t deserve getting growled at by Batman.

So Tim says the first excuse that comes to mind, “I need to use the bathroom. I’ll be right back.”

He doesn’t go far. Down a street or two where the buildings are lower, where Bruce wouldn’t be able to easily see him or call him out on his lie. Tim stops on a building that’s tucked against the side of a much larger one, the break from the wind is appreciated even if everything else isn’t.

A sudden gust of air nearly knocks him over as something—someone, someone who Tim’s kind of pissed at—blows past him, and he barely manages to catch the paper left behind before it flies off the edge of the building. And it’s a card. Tim keeps the smile carefully off his face as he sits down and reads the front.

‘To Robin,’ is written in cursive writing with a pink glittery heart outlined around it.

He opens it, the right side is taken up entirely by a messy albeit colorful drawing of four people standing side by side with more hearts drawn above them, the left is covered with a ridiculous number of ‘X’s and ‘O’s. He can recognize himself as Robin drawn between Impulse and Wonder Girl. Tim closes the card and folds it in two before tucking it in a pouch on his belt.

Another gust and red fingerless gloves fall across his eyes. Tim crosses his arms as two sets of footsteps start and stop behind him. “You know you aren’t allowed in Gotham.”

“How’d you know it was us?” Bart takes his hands from Tim’s eyes to wrap them around his shoulders.

“Your gloves,” Tim says deadpan. “Who else would be throwing chocolate at me?”

Bart considers his gloves and wiggles his fingers. Tim feels a bit bad for him, it’s almost minus thirty out and Bart’s not moving around nearly enough to keep warm right now. He goes to cover Bart’s with his when Bart answers, “Spoiler?”

And then Tim doesn’t because, “I already told you there’s nothing between us, she just likes to flirt,” Tim has had this conversation a dozen times. It’s the truth, Tim is one hundred percent certain that Stephanie flirts with him because she feels safe with him. Nothing deeper.

“Dude, she has a crush on you,” Kon says, and Tim has to tilt his head back at such a weird angle to be able to see him and Cassie where they stand behind Bart. “And it’s Valentine’s Day, and you weren’t going to visit.”

He’s busy. “Instead, I helped stop twenty-three robberies and muggings.” Not to mention everything else, and the night’s far from over.

“Rob, Bart made a cake. We could have come and got you and had you back in less than an hour.”

True, but, “I needed that hour here.”

Kon sighs. “This would be so much easier if you’d tell us who you are.” Way to guilt trip.

“Sorry.” There’s no point in saying it, they all already know, but he does anyway. He wishes he could tell them if the thought is really what counts, Bruce would never allow it though. Tim doesn’t have the guts to go against that yet, so sorry is all he can give.

“He didn’t mean it like that, we just want to spend time with you,” Cassie says. Like what, Tim doesn’t ask. “Outside of the mask.”

“You know I can’t do that.” They do know. He’s said it enough times. Tim has his gloves off and Bart’s hands are in his now. His fingers really are cold.

“I know, I don’t mean out of the mask, mask. Just maybe outside of missions sometime. Like a date.” Cassie, like Kon, has a way of making things sound simple. Maybe Tim is the one making it complicated, but he can see something as small, as simple as a date ending terribly. “We don’t have to know your name to know you.”

“I—”

“It’d be easier if you told Batman,” Kon cuts him off and says it like it’s not a big thing. It is. To Tim at least.

So many things could go wrong, Bruce might not approve, and Tim does not want Batman, someone who has the power to shut Young Justice down, disapproving of his relationship. The thing with the chocolates probably has him suspicious already. Dick has never dated multiple people at once—not that Tim knows of—so he has nothing to base Bruce’s possible reaction off of. They’ve only been together for two months. It’s not worth the risk. “No.”

“Come on, it wouldn’t be that bad,” Kon says, “Red Tornado knows, and he’s cool with it.”

“Red Tornado isn’t an overprotective man in a bat suit.”

“He’d back us up.”

“Against Batman?”

“Well, yeah.”

That’s not happening.

“I have to go,” Tim says. He really does, this has been way too long for a bathroom break and this conversation makes him feel awful. Tim unhooks Bart’s arms and puts his gauntlets back on. “Batman’s going to worry.”

“Oh. See you tomorrow?” Cassie asks, disappointed. He’s probably an awful person.

Tim steps around Kon to pull her into a hug and kisses her cheek. He doesn’t want to leave things like this either. It’s just… “Yeah, see you tomorrow.”


End file.
